Events

Public health law in the European Union

In the EU, national governments have a specific responsibility to strive to create the conditions in which people can be as healthy as possible. Part I of this session will discuss how this responsibility for health has been interpreted and the challenges that exist in terms of discharging this responsibility. We will also discuss the interplay between policy and law, examining the functions of the Parliament and Council in this context and asking why is public health law important.

In Part II we will look at a brief overview of national public health systems in some EU jurisdictions and we will also discuss whether there should be a single public health act in Europe. The session will conclude with a look at the current program of EU action in health, for example in relation to communicable disease and health promotion.

About the speaker:

Dr Deirdre Madden is a Senior Lecturer in Law with research interests and publications primarily in the area of medical law and ethics. She has a Master's degree on surrogate motherhood and a PhD on the law relating to assisted reproduction. She was called to the Bar in 1989. Her books include Medicine, Ethics and the Law (Bloomsbury 2nd ed. 2011) and Medical Law (Kluwer 2010). Dr Madden was author of the Report on Post-Mortem Practice and Procedure (2005) and Chairperson of the Commission on Patient Safety and Quality Assurance which published its Report, entitled Building a Culture of Patient Safety, in July 2008.

Dr Madden has been a member of the Medical Council since 2004 and is a current member of the Fitness to Practise Committee and Chairperson of the Ethics Working Group of the Council. She is currently a member of a number of national expert groups related to medical law, ethics and patient safety, including the National Patient Safety Advisory Group, the National Advisory Committee on Bioethics, HIQA's Research Advisory Group and Expert Groups on the Implementation of the ABC v Ireland judgement and the Implementation of HIQA's Tallaght Report. Dr Madden also currently chairs the National Consent Advisory Group for the HSE.

In addition to participation in a number of European research projects, Dr Madden is also an expert evaluator for the European Commission; a member of the Research Ethics Committee for the National Longitudinal Study of Children in Ireland; legal expert for UNESCO's Global Ethics Observatory Project; ethics consultant for HIQA on Health Technology Assessment; consultant for the National Healthcare Regulatory Authority in Bahrain; member of the National Council of the Forum on End-of-Life; Visiting Professor at the University of Leicester; and an elected Fellow of the Hastings Center in the United States.

Lawyers/barristers: attendance at this seminar is equal to 2.5 MCLE/CPD units.